


you and me, bro

by kihadu



Series: partners, yeah? [1]
Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Character, Coming Out, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Mentions of homophobia, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 21:05:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3425573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Least we didn’t change.’ He shoved his elbow into Cougar’s ribs. ‘You and me bro, until the very end. Yeah?’</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and me, bro

Cougar never stopped talking, he just learned that not everyone could be bothered to wait for him to fumble through English. A second language he never needed to use until he was into high school, and by then his tongue seemed stuck.

Later, he turned it into a thing, something as part of him as his name and his hat and his too-long slightly curly hair.

He was brought up Catholic, brought up a good boy, going to be a good man. He was meant for better things.

His first tour over he remembered an open-casket funeral, one he wasn’t allowed to attend. He’d been eight at the time. His great-aunt told him later that she’d never seen a dead person before. Even back then, Cougar couldn’t understand how you got to be that old without seeing a dead person. Now, in the heat of Afghanistan, he looked at the other soldiers with the same sort of shock. Cougar was younger than a lot of them, both in age and service. First mission done and he knew that four of his bullets went into different bodies. He wasn’t not the norm. More than a few finished their tour never firing their gun to kill, and that was something to be proud of. Still, Cougar found himself looking down at them.

He still found himself scrubbing his hands, washing off blood that wasn’t there.

Cougar had spoken twice in the last seven months, and both were a ‘yes, sir’ to different officers who didn’t get the rule. He got a command and he gave a nod. His assent over the comms was static or tapping or some other noise that wasn’t his voice. Most of the time even that much wasn’t necessary. If he did his job there was a person’s head stretched out and scattered. One less life on the planet of nine billion, and no one needing to ask confirmation for his work.

He found it easier to use big numbers, so the ones and twos that he killed didn’t seem to matter. And he found it easier to not talk, because then he didn’t matter much, either.

No one ever paid him much attention. One kid out of six, shorter than his brothers and quieter than his sisters. Even at that age he’d learned how to be forgotten. Later, when he was older, when he’d joined the army, he learned how to be forgotten for real.

In the eighth month since Cougar remembered to start counting, he was standing swallowing and licking the inside of his mouth, trying to remember how to form words. He rather suspected that this meeting was going to demand something more complicated than a ‘yes, sir’. He’d been waiting for something of the sort, a dismissal, a discharge. He killed people without complaint and he didn’t talk. The army needed people like him but they didn’t want people like him, and Cougar was terrified of the day that he would be made to leave.

There was no home for him waiting. No god that would take him back.

He swallowed again, trying to work his throat back into life. He didn’t like talking but he liked his words to be clear, when he had to give them.

He didn’t manage it. He half croaked it, less of a snappy ‘yes, sir’ they like to shout at parades and more like Cougar’d been swallowing the desert. He took the folder that was handed him, and realised after he was dismissed that he didn’t really remember the crux of the meeting, only that he was still here. Still in uniform.

 

 

———

 

 

They were silent the morning they shipped out, a silence punctuated by stilted jokes, a silence that lingered and weighed heavy on them. Cougar was packed first, always was. His stuff was sitting there by the jeep.

Jensen had spread all his stuff out on the concrete and was going through it item by item to be certain had everything - battery, spares, solar charger, cords, replacements, knives, guns, ammo, food, spare underwear, spare socks - but he paused long enough to watch Cougar. Cougar sat cross-legged in front of his pack and began doing his hair.

Jensen was well acquainted with Cougar’s hair. The little shack they shared, the building out of the way to the rest of the army base, it had three dorms and Cougar and Jensen shared one. Jensen had spent the past month of training together learning exactly how Cougar’s hair fell, how it tangled, how it looked immediately after waking.

He cut it himself, and usually with a knife. It hung jagged and turned into feathers almost as soon as they hit hostile territory.

Still, they were the dead men walking, the end of the line, the last resort of living ghosts. If they got captured, no one was coming for them. If they got captured, no one would pay their ransom. Their videos would never hit the news, their faces would never get online. And later, when they were dead, that was all truer than before. Jensen figured he was allowed to take comfort where he could.

He watched, lips parted mouth dry and lungs stopped in his chest. Cougar didn’t notice, or didn’t pay attention. He braided the hair just enough that it wouldn’t hang in front of his eyes even if his hat got tipped off.

It took Roque dropping a knife, an accidental clatter on cement, for Jensen to drag his eyes away.

 

 

———

 

 

‘You got family?’ Pooch was asking Roque, and Roque only gave him a snarl in response. Jensen got it, he really did. Pooch was going to be a father, and all he wanted to do was talk about family.

Jensen, though, he didn’t get family. They were important but only if they earned it, and way Jensen saw it his family was three and only if he counted himself. Or four, if Cougar was coming. Maybe seven, if the rest of the team was going to be in on it.

Huh. Maybe he had more family than he thought.

‘Jensen?’

He decided to keep all that to himself. It probably wasn’t the time to go round telling his team they were his family. ‘Got my niece and my sister,’ he said. ‘Had my dad, but he was a dick, so.’ It was baseball practice today, him swinging an invisible bat to hit an invisible ball. Kept himself limber. Kept himself remembering life outside the army.

‘Man, that sucks,’ said Pooch.

‘Ah, I guess. I mean, you can’t get lucky with everyone. My sister kinda raised me. She’s like. Probably a goddess. And my niece, damn.’ He grinned. ‘If your kid is anything like my niece, you’re gonna be one lucky man.’

‘Already am,’ said Pooch. ‘What about you, Cougar? You get lucky enough?’

Cougar lifted his eyes to meet Jensen’s, before skittering away. ‘My family do not talk to me.’

‘Dude, why?’ blurted Jensen. ‘You’re awesome.’

Instead of answering, Cougar walked away. Jensen looked at Pooch; Pooch looked at Jensen, and they both shrugged their lack of knowledge.

‘Clay!’

‘Shut up,’ Clay growled.

‘Not everyone’s thrilled to have relations,’ said Pooch, watching Clay stalk away to his tent. Jensen nodded.

‘Not everyone’s lucky.’

‘I hear that.’ Pooch held out his fist for a bump.

 

 

———

 

 

‘You wanna talk about it?’ Jensen asked, later. He didn’t expect an answer, half because Cougar never talked and half because Cougar never talked about feelings. Cougar spared him enough attention to raise an eyebrow in questioning. ‘Your family, man.’

Cougar shook his head, just once, and went back to fitting his rifle back together. ‘No,’ he added.

‘If you want. Like. Shit, man. I know we’re all big tough men or whatever. But I wear pink.’

Cougar wasn’t sure what that meant and Jensen seemed to think he’d explained himself properly, so he disappeared off to the other side of the tent leaving Cougar to turn his words around in his mind. English wasn’t his first language, and there were colloquialisms he fell short on. More when it came to Jensen, who spoke a language not quite in the same circle as regular-person English.

He couldn’t fathom what wearing pink had to do with anything.

 

 

———

 

 

Sniper and medic meant that sometimes when he was needed he was very far away, and sometimes he got to watch Pooch get shot through his scope knowing that it was a twenty minute run down and up the hill to reach him.

It was ass-cold and they were in what Jensen had been calling the bad end of Ukraine. Privately, Cougar reckoned that most of Ukraine was the bad end. Least, he’d not yet seen a part he’d call good.

Pooch was a good target, solid black against the green-grey of the vehicle. Shoot the driver and get rid of their way out. Cougar shot the shooter and spun his scope back over Pooch to see. The guy was up but badly, clinging to the door-handle for support.

He opened his mouth to say something, the rest of the team busy with their bit of the firefight.

‘I got him,’ said Jensen. His mouth sounded right next to Cougar’s ear, and he had to hold back a shiver. ‘You good?’

In reply Cougar just shot another man, a lovely line of sight that ended with the guy’s hat flying over the courtyard.

 

 

———

 

 

‘The Ukraine has a temperate continental climate with cold winters and warm summers,’ Jensen said.

‘Continental?’ asked Roque. ‘This isn’t a goddamn breakfast.’

‘This is worse than cold,’ said Clay. Cougar just pulled off his fingerless gloves and waited for them to position Pooch on the table. They were all huddling together even if they didn’t want to look like they were. There was a fearsome wind cutting through the tent, and no matter what they did they couldn’t shut off the draft.

‘We gotta stop meeting like this,’ Pooch joked. He was a little high, comfortably dosed on morphine. Cougar splashed alcohol over his fingers, took the gloves Jensen handed him, and dove in without a word.

‘So how bad is it, doc?’

‘You’ll live,’ he muttered.

‘You’ll live to dance again,’ Jensen proclaimed. He was peering over Cougar’s shoulder a mite too close. Cougar growled at him. ‘Alright, alright. Geez, don’t come to me if you want cuddles.’

Roque rolled his eyes, and Cougar focused rather more intently on his work.

‘You’re lucky we’re done with work for a week,’ said Clay. Unless they got assigned another piece by some guy who didn’t know or care what they’d been up to. The army was like that.

Last box of supplies had been half what they needed, and pay was behind. Clay had some savings and Pooch had a wife still working, but it wasn’t fair to be made to buy food off their own dime. Cougar was too skinny. Jensen could see it even if the others didn’t notice for feeling their own hipbones start to stick out.

Least it wasn’t Afghanistan, Pooch liked to say, but that was scarcely anything to be glad for. One shitstorm swapped for another, and now Pooch was shot with his arm in sling.

They got two whole days of nothing before they got told they were going further north. Still with no supplies, still left with the shit they’d been dumped with further south.

‘Layer up,’ Clay said.

‘With what?’ Jensen demanded. ‘I’m wearing two goddamn pairs of pants, and really, the boys aren’t happy all tied up like they are.’

‘Leave mentions of your balls for someone who gives a damn,’ Clay returned. ‘Ain’t nothing I can do,’ he added.

 

 

———

 

 

It was colder, and no one was surprised and no one complained. Not worth spending their energy on something they were all feeling.

‘Home sweet home,’ Jensen declared, stepping into a building they’d been left by the last team who went through. Jensen had managed to get an email from their tech, who’d told him that the heater wasn’t working and there were explosives left in the fireplace. The house was kinda big, especially given the area they were in, where two-room houses for a twelve-person family was the norm.

That first night Jensen reckoned they had something going there. Him alone in a sleeping bag in a room separate to the others left him shivering, and the next night when Pooch told them they were going to share he didn’t complain. Wasn’t even surprised to find the others had all decided to join in. Jensen got lucky, got to lie down close next to his computers, which was the closest thing to a heater they had without sharing body heat. Pooch, still injured, got the other side.

Jensen woke up halfway through the night to something close behind him. He startled, of course, and frantically twisted around, one hand already grabbing the pistol left beside his head.

It was Cougar. The lights of Jensen’s computers flickered off, and all he could feel was Cougar pressed against him, thin silky softness of their sleeping bags crushed between them, and Cougar.

Jensen didn’t want to move. He could _feel_ Cougar, feel him like he’d never thought.

He’d been in the army long enough to know what sharing a room with men was like. Seeing another man’s hard-on through cotton just happened, sometimes. It was kind of embarrassing, Jensen felt, even if half the men were obnoxious about it. Sexist pigs, Jensen thought, but that sort of anti-attitude wasn’t the way of the army.

But Cougar wasn’t like those guys, and Cougar was the one who’d rolled over during the night to get all curled up against Jensen’s back.

A light blinked on and off again, all lazy-like, staying enough to show Cougar’s eyes wide awake and panicked.

‘Lo siento,’ he breathed, and twisted, fast and away.

Jensen wanted to ask what for, but didn’t, and when he woke the next morning, too early, Roque always awake first and loud about it, he thought maybe it had been a dream.

 

 

———

 

 

‘Pooch,’ Jensen whispered. ‘Pooch!’

‘Let a man concentrate,’ Pooch snapped back. To be fair, he was in the middle of rejigging a bazooka that had decided to cark it.

‘You reckon Cougar’s been acting weird?’

‘Weirder than you?’ Pooch muttered.

‘Uncool.’

They both looked up to see Cougar sitting across the way. ‘No weirder than usual.’

Jensen disagreed. ‘He’s been weird.’

‘Why don’t you get yourself shot or something,’ said Pooch. ‘That always cheers him up.’

‘You nearly done?’ Clay asked, looming suddenly over them.

‘Nearly, Colonel.’

‘Then stop jibbering and be better than nearly.’

‘It’s about Cougar,’ Jensen said, before Pooch could tell him not to.

‘He has been a bit quieter than usual,’ Clay allowed. ‘Maybe take him out drinking. Always cheers him up, getting to steal your girls.’

‘I think you have to have a chance for it to be properly stealing,’ Pooch grinned.

‘You guys suck.’ Jensen snatched up his laptop and stalked away to the sound of their chuckling.

 

 

———

 

 

The mail arrived by helicopter, a large cluster of boxes that Jensen leaped for the moment they touched the ground.

‘Is it here, is it here? Baby, hallelujah, they actually read a request for once!’ He held the replacement hard-drive over his head like a trophy.

‘They didn’t pack any goddamn socks,’ Roque growled. ‘Or thermals.’ He tossed the remnants of the box he’d been digging through onto the ground.

‘Hah,’ Pooch said, no humour at all. ‘Guess what else they didn’t give us.’

Roque stopped in his clean-up. ‘Don’t say food.’

‘Alright, I won’t, but we’re all gonna get hungry,’ said Pooch.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Clay cried. ‘Again? Fucking - Jensen, get me a line. I need to have a proper word with someone.’

‘Yeah, alright, can I just set this up?’

‘No,’ said Roque and Clay together.

Jensen skedaddled the room the moment the call clicked through. Clay knew enough to hang up when he was done and Jensen was sensitive. Have a man yelling around him, even if the yelling wasn’t at him, and he’d end up feeling like he’d fucked up all ways to Sunday.

‘You have mail,’ said Pooch. They could hear Clay through the wall. This room was colder, lacking the warmth from their sleeping and Jensen’s computers. The envelope was a blue so bright that the address was written on a white sticker just so it could be read properly.

Jensen didn’t fail to notice the way Cougar left the room as him and Pooch read their correspondence from home.

 

 

———

 

 

‘Jensen, you’re up.’

‘For what?’ Jensen groaned.

Clay had finished yelling, and there was the promise of another helicopter the next day, this time with food. In the meantime they were rationed, because no one trusted the army to actually do what they said they would do. Clay hadn’t asked for thermals. He hadn’t wanted to push his luck.

‘Perimeter patrol.’

‘You just went,’ Jensen returned.

‘Literal hours ago, dude,’ said Pooch. ‘I did mine before breakfast.’

Muttering about the cold, Jensen pulled himself out of his sleeping bag. Roque was still over there, and Jensen’s hard drive was happily ticking through getting files copied. The last one had suffered a joyful fall off the truck down a cliff, and it was only Pooch’s scary addiction to stunt driving that had gotten it back. Jensen didn’t want to bet on it lasting much longer. It already made an awful noise if he tried to put too much on it at once, and hard drives weren’t meant to make that kind of whine.

‘Anyone coming with me?’ he asked. They were allowed to take a stroll alone, and with the weather what it was he didn’t expect a response. But Cougar didn’t answer, only slid out of his sleeping bag with a bit of a shiver and pulled his hat on over his beanie.

The ground was that sort of slippery frozen that made Jensen wish it snowed, just a little, just to get some slush between the dirt so there was some grip under his feet. His rifle wasn’t ready to fire. Protocol was it with safety on and no bullet waiting, gun slung easily over his back. He was proud of how fast he could spin it round and click it ready, but right now he got to trudge with his hands in his pockets. He grumbled about the weather.

‘And you, Cougs, you gotta be feeling this. You’re not bred for this sort of thing.’ He knew that Cougar caught maybe one word in twenty, but the rest of the Losers caught only about the same, generally tuning him out. He didn’t mind. He got to ramble and no one told him to shut up, much. ‘Shit, man, it’s all in the wind. Let’s head for those trees, maybe it’ll give some cover. This is bullshit,’ he added. ‘There’s nothing out here ‘cept us dumb fucks.’

Cougar didn’t say anything, which wasn’t unexpected but it was pissing Jensen off. Cougar didn’t talk much but he did talk to him, and the weird-ass mood he’d been in for the past few days was grating.

‘What is up with you, anyhow? Is it the family thing, cos you know I’m not gonna ask but I do wanna know. If you want I can read my mail out of the room but I’m still gonna get it. You’ve just been less talkative than normal, and shit, man, we’re buddies. I don’t want you to be sad. Unless it’s this weather, in which case,’ Jensen made a wide-sweeping gesture around them. The sky was heavy and grey, trees nearly black against it. He couldn’t pinpoint the sun through the clouds; they had no shadows stretching down the hill behind them. ‘Shit-ass place,’ Jensen muttered.

‘I am gay,’ said Cougar. The words were careful and soft, and almost got lost in the wind and their feet and Jensen breathing hard in the cold air.

‘What?’ Jensen blurted. He wasn’t sure he’d heard properly. ‘No you’re not.’

Cougar didn’t look at him. ‘It is why my family do not talk to me.’

‘Yeah, Cougs, good story and all, but I’ve seen you with women.’ Cougar’s face was already blushing from the cold but he had the good grace to look embarrassed by that memory. Not every door locked, but least he could do was throw a sock on the handle. ‘Best is, you’re bisexual.’

‘I’m gay.’

‘Nup. Bisexual. Not to take your words from you, but any man that enthusiastic with women is at least halfway on the Kinsey.’

‘Men aren’t bisexual,’ Cougar insisted. ‘Gay or normal.’ He shrugged, as if that was the way of it and there was nothing he could do to change it.

‘You gotta read some different books,’ said Jensen.

‘Are you gay?’

Jensen slipped on the dirt and needed to grab a branch to keep from falling. ‘Christ, Cougs. You can’t just out and ask.’

‘Sorry. Forget it.’ Cougar was hurrying ahead, and Jensen stumbled a little trying to catch up.

‘Cougar - shit,’ he grabbed another tree for stability. ‘It’s just not. We don’t talk about shit like that. This is the army.’

‘You said you wear pink.’

‘What?’

‘A few weeks ago. You said, you wear pink.’

‘Oh.’ Jensen blinked, and laughed, a little nervous. ‘I meant I’m cool with talking about feelings. It’s healthy. Regular at the therapist, that’s me.’ The conversation all caught up with him in a rush. ‘Your family don’t talk to you cos you like dick?’ He put a hand on Cougar’s shoulder. ‘That’s rough, man. And no, I’m not - I’m not gay. I just really, really suck with women. I mean - shit,’ he breathed out. They were still walking, not looking at each other, but that didn’t really make it any easier. ‘I’m into guys. I mean. I don’t. This is the army,’ he repeated. ‘But,’ he shrugged, helplessly, a little, _what can you do?_

‘Men can be bisexual,’ Jensen said, more to break the silence than anything else.

‘No,’ Cougar said.

‘Well I am, and I’m definitely a guy.’

Cougar’s steady steps faltered then, and he chanced a look over at Jensen from beneath the brim of his hat. Jensen gave another shrug, another _what can you do?_

‘I’m sorry about your family.’

‘It’s been years,’ said Cougar. His voice was that same practised careful English, slightly grating for lack of use. But there was something different between them. A tense kind of newness, and all Jensen could do was hope it would wear into something more comfortable. He liked Cougar. He didn’t want things to be weird between them.

 

 

———

 

 

‘New assignment,’ said Jensen. He pushed himself up from his cross-legged position on the cold cement floor and let Clay take over.

‘You’ll like this one, boys,’ said Clay, clicking through. ‘It’s Bolivia.’

 

 

———

 

 

‘Man did kill us, Clay. This is it,’ said Roque. He stretched one arm out to take in the street, rubbish in the gutters, a kid walking barefoot with a limp. ‘This is heaven. Take off that,’ he waved his hand at Clay. ‘That goddamn suit. Take it off, and get used to this. We died, and this is heaven.’

‘But -’

‘No,’ Roque snapped. ‘No.’ He stormed away.

 

 

———

 

 

‘It’s fucked up, you know?’ asked Jensen. ‘It’s fucked up, this is all we get, and this.’ He scrabbled at his head as if he could claw out his own brain. ‘This is the fucking mess we have.’ There was no way out. There was no home to get back to.

Cougar didn’t say anything. Hadn’t said anything much at all.

He spoke in Spanish to the kids, more words strung together than Jensen has heard out of him, ever. He’d always thought Cougar didn’t like talking but it seemed he just didn’t like talking English.

It was still raw in his mind, that explosion. Helicopter parts burning over fresh cut grass. It had been a week but he couldn’t get the stink of that fire out of his nose.

Cougar slapped his leg. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There's a bar I saw.’

Pooch met them there. Back when Cougar had first started with them, years and years ago a silent boy with too much Catholic guilt, it’d been much the same. Awkward silence with the filtered noise of everyone around falling down into their circle. Roque joined them, and Clay. They didn’t hang out as much as Jensen would like. Before, before the kids, Jensen had figured them basically family.

He’d tried to share this theory with Cougar, but Cougar hadn’t wanted to listen.

He tried again, a few weeks into their death.

‘It’s like a divorce.’ Cougar handed him a doll. The factory wasn’t anyplace Jensen had ever thought he’d end up working. He was a computer genius, and Cougar could be a nurse at least. His bedside manner might have something lacking but the knowledge was all there. Bolivia and undercover and technically dead, and so, a doll factory.

‘Or a death in the family. There’s that statistic where most couples separate after the death of a child?’

‘Not true,’ said Cougar.

‘It’s in a book.’

‘Not true,’ Cougar repeated. He didn’t like having to repeat himself.

‘Still,’ said Jensen, not to be deterred. ‘If it were true, which it’s not,’ he waited for Cougar to give him a nod, ‘then that’s what this is like. Death in the family, now none of us talk.’

‘We had breakfast with Pooch.’

‘Alright, alright, Señor Exacto. It’s different. I don’t like it. Least we didn’t change.’ He shoved his elbow into Cougar’s ribs. ‘You and me bro, until the very end. Yeah?’ Cougar looked at the fist offered him. ‘Come on, Cougs. Don’t leave me hanging. You and me. Till the end.’ With the smallest of smiles Cougar gave him his fist bump.

‘Yeah, that’s what I’m on about. Look at you, grinning like a Cheshire.’ With a roll of his eyes Cougar handed him another doll. ‘I gotta make Pooch smile. Then Clay. Or Roque. Which one’s gonna be harder?’

‘Roque,’ said Cougar.

‘Yeah, yeah you’re right. Always are. Shit, what’s it gonna take to get Roque to smile? Maybe if I got him a puppy.’

 

 

———

 

 

They met Pooch on their morning run. Jensen ran faster but Cougar ran longer, and Pooch couldn’t keep up with either of them, so he met them halfway to finish together.

‘So Pooch,’ said Jensen. He was breathing easy; Pooch wasn’t thrilled for conversation, but even high-lining off buildings couldn’t shut Jensen up. Idly, Pooch wondered if Jensen would shut up during sex, but he didn’t have anyone to ask. Maybe Cougar, but maybe not. Pooch could never figure them out.

‘Yes?’ he managed. He’d never liked running. He’d joined the army before he’d fully realised just how much running he’d have to do.

‘I got Cougs there to smile yesterday.’

‘Don’t share,’ Pooch muttered.

‘What? Huh?’ Pooch only struggled to breathe a little in answer. ‘Never mind. I wanna cheer you up. How can I do that?’

‘Jolene,’ said Pooch, and oh, of course, of course. The obvious answer, but the most difficult one to do anything about. Cougar was ahead of them, and Jensen slowed down enough to jog all three together. This wasn’t exactly undercover, three guys and one of them whiter than paper jogging before work in Bolivia, but kinda weird and fit enough to run away was better than being too cautious.

At night, Cougar and Jensen did body-weights, pushups, situps, that sort of thing. It was hot enough that Cougar didn’t wear a shirt for those, and Jensen was always left feeling pleased that he’d ended up sharing the shitty apartment with the guy.

He didn’t mean to look, even if there had been that conversation a few months before. It felt unkind, staring where staring hadn’t been invited. He’d always felt like it was taking advantage, somehow, but their apartment was tiny and there wasn’t much else to look at.

 

 

———

 

 

‘You know, we’re basically Miguel and Tulio.’ Cougar gave him a long-suffering look. ‘You know. El Dorado? Christ, man, don’t you pay attention? They’re Spanish.’

‘I am _Mexican_.’

‘You speak - alright, alright,’ said Jensen, backtracking as fast as he could. ‘You’re not Spanish. You’ve seriously never seen The Road to El Dorado?’

‘When would I?’

‘Valid point,’ Jensen nodded. ‘Well, I’m Miguel, obviously.’

Cougar rolled his eyes. ‘Obviously.’

‘And you’re Tulio.’ Cougar still wasn’t getting it. ‘Miguel and Tulio! Great and powerful gods.’ Cougar looked at Jensen’s computer in the vague hope that something over there would need getting done, but it didn’t, and it was just Cougar putting the last touches on the helicopter. The rest had left the hanger, and it was a dusty sort of silence in their wake.

Silence bar Jensen’s chattering, which Cougar considered window-dressing, really.

‘They’re like, they’re partners. Like you and me, bro. Tulio’s better at getting women but in the end they’re always back to the two of them. Hey, are you wearing eyeliner?’ Cougar frowned at him, all kinds of confused. ‘Sorry, the light. I mean, I guess at the end of the movie they do have Chel. But I reckon that’s more of a threesome thing. You into poly?’ Cougar was reaching the limit of questions he didn’t understand, so he glared a little. ‘Like a threesome, but longer.’

Cougar paused to put all the words into the right order before he said, ‘You wouldn’t know a threesome if it hit you in the face.’

Jensen clutched at his heart, grinning. ‘A low blow, man, and kinda my point. Miguel’s the cute loveable one and Tulio’s tall dark and handsome, gets all the ladies. Steals the ladies from Miguel.’ Cougar gave him a sharp look, and chuckled. ‘Yeah, this is about the toy factory party. One of those women was mine. At least. You owe me.’

‘This Miguel and Tulio, they are partners.’

‘Yeah. Partners share. You gotta do a little more sharing. Least of all you could chat up Aisha for me.’

‘Hmph,’ said Cougar.

‘Hmph? I ask you to play fair and your reaction is a grumpy face?’

‘You say threesome. And they’re partners.’

‘Yes. Oh-!’ Jensen saw where Cougar was going with this. ‘Oh, well. Yeah.’ He tilted his head. ‘Never really considered it, but yeah.’

Cougar stepped closer. ‘Boyfriends.’

Jensen swallowed. He was getting used to Cougar getting in his personal space. The weeks in Bolivia had forced it into him. This felt different. He suddenly wished he’d never thought of El Dorado and Tulio and all the lines that could be drawn between. But then Cougar stepped back.

‘I have to see this movie.’

‘It’s a kids movie. You might not like it. There’s, um. There’s singing.’

Cougar shrugged. ‘I will see this movie. And leave Aisha alone.’

‘It’s pretty clear she doesn’t want me,’ said Jensen. He sighed. ‘Gonna be twenty-eight and still single.' He couldn’t exactly be anything else, what with his lifestyle and general distance from anyone not his team or the enemy, but it woulda been nice. Just someone he wanted and wanting him back. 

‘You have me,’ Cougar suggested.

'Well, duh.’ He gave a lopsided grin. ‘Course I do. You’re my Tulio.’ 


End file.
